Asides

I chose a course on edX on the introduction of probability. The course starts of with just a little overview, saying what the course is going to be about and the layout of the course.

Next you take an entrance survey. They ask you why you’re taking the course, if you plan to finish it and receive a certificate and what kind of math you already know.

The class is broken up into 4 different units then an exam, then three more units and another exam then one more unit. Each unit has a lecture, the lectures are split up into a bunch of different lecture videos, then a little exercise to complete.

Next the lesson goes over a little review for you, basically going over the whole lecture quickly and more generally than the first time.

Next the class goes over a few problems to really lock in the understanding. Then there is a problem set, or homework for you to do. They give you a due date any everything for the homework.

And lastly there is a forum at the end of the lesson to make any comments you have.

I could definitely learn from this kind of setting, the professor of this class had a really boring voice but other than that, I could easily utilize an online class like this one. I like how the break the course up into two different exams so there isn’t too much content on one test. The content and layout of the class is really easy to follow and very user friendly.

However, I am not sure if this would work for the age group I want to teach. I would like to teach elementary and with younger kids it might get a little tricky. There is a lot of clicking around and if the kids weren’t really proficient in their computer skills in might make it a little tricky.

I also think younger kids would have a hard time focusing for each lesson. There is a lot of lecturing and videos and I’m not sure if I could ask second graders to watch a ten-minute video without breaking it up at all. They do not have a very high attention span, and cannot sit for long periods of time without changing what they are doing. If the videos were shorter and were broken up even more than they are it could work, but I also think this would make it even harder for the kids to navigate.

A real classroom environment is better for all ages because we can stop and go over any question that the students have. If they need something explained differently then the teacher is there to help them out. However, but the online classes if the student does not understand one of the concepts then they can play a video over and over again. But if they still cannot get it that is where a real classroom environment is helpful. The teacher can explain the concept a different way.

It would be really cool to be able to tell kids to go home and do the online course then they could come back to school the next day and you could do more hands on activities and labs. Granted this means that every student would have to have some sort of electronic device that they could take the class on, which I’m sure most do, but we can never assume. It would be easy to do in the classroom if there was a set of iPads for the students, but then instead of doing an online course the teacher may as well be teaching the same material.

In my Math 136 class my teacher used technology in a very effective way and always kept my classmates and I engaged. During regular lecture hours he always used the smart board and any tools the board had to offer. Like the digital graphing calculator, if he was showing us how to do something on the calculator he pulled up a digital form of the calculator and actually used it on the smart board. The nice thing was the he explained how to do these things so we could figure it out in our own classroom. He also used slides on the smart board that were interactive. You could pull shapes, number lines, or graphs onto the slides to effectively show the topic of the class. He also used a program called GeoGebra. Since this class was based on geometry this program was extremely effective. We went into a lab every Friday and got to spend the whole class doing an activity. He would start out by showing us how exactly what do what the lab was asking then cut us lose to work on the lab. Maybe we have to make a triangle with an area of 12 square units or make a quadrilateral with all exactly congruent sides. I thought this was a great way to take advantage of technology and use it in a way to help students learn.